Port in a Storm Read online

  Colin couldn't do magic the way humans could, couldn't grab and tug at strings of power, because he didn't see power the same way; he already existed in a swirl of magic, laced through his being, and looking for lines to pull or rivers to channel would be like separating out strands of his soul. He could divert those rivers sometimes, could change into cat shape when he wanted to, could make his own reservoirs available to—or shielded from—anyone he chose. But he didn't have the right eyes or hands to use that shimmering brightness the way David could.

  The way another warlock could.

  The way a horribly unscrupulous warlock could. Someone who wanted to siphon power from a magical resource, a pool of strength waiting to be tapped.

  David had started automatically scratching behind his ears, hand generous and amused, but paused. Colin realized he'd stopped purring.

  He turned his head. He couldn't look at his rescuer. He didn't know how he felt.

  Stupid, yes: that was certainly one of the emotions. Tired. Self-conscious. Scared for both no reason and a very good reason: he did know exactly how he'd gotten into trouble this time and how he could've avoided it, and he did believe David wouldn't hurt him, but he'd just escaped eight months of being collared, and unscrupulous warlocks were absolutely on his mind.

  David at the moment remained under the impression that he'd rescued a mere cat, which was temporarily good. A small part of Colin's head suggested nastily that David couldn't be that skilled a witch if he wasn't picking up the magical aura of a therianthrope currently in his house, but then again David was a genuinely nice guy, based on currently available evidence. David quite possibly didn't want to pry into even a cat's privacy and so hadn't even looked, and therefore Colin's head was being mean and cranky and looking for flaws, which wasn't really fair.

  He was staying a cat because that'd be safer. If he shifted back now, David would know exactly what he was. Depending on David's shields, so would any number of magical practitioners within some radius of this house.

  Shields. He should check on David's. He tilted his head, whiskers forward, extending senses. He was good at feeling magic, presence prickling in his bones. And David Stanton—

  David Stanton had excellent shields. The house sat wrapped up in layer upon layer of skillful, self-supporting protections: swirls of silvery opalescent defense from physical thieves and intruders, night-blue blossoms of magical warding, interestingly complex lavender-meadowsweet sparkles of emotional armor—oh, fascinating, David kept up wards that held anxiety and depression and rationality-shattering panic at bay. Primrose and sunset-gold billowed optimistically through the other colors; the scents of waterfalls and green leaves laced calm into the recipe like sweetness through a ginger cake. The wardings were partly for customers—David did a lot of work with kids and families in need of healing, Colin recalled—and partly clearly written for David himself, who very tangibly worried to the point of distress about fulfilling other people's needs.

  Colin now had a whole host of other emotions. He turned back around—David had tactfully not resumed petting him, letting him do what he wanted, checking email on a slightly older but decently expensive cellphone—and walked right up and put paws on that solid chest and offered a plaintive feline chirp in David's face: I'm sorry.

  David laughed, set the phone down—a small crease between eyes, but a smile—and ruffled his fur. "Fuck, you're cute. Kinda unpredictable, but cute."

  Unpredictable. Well, it wasn't a wrong word. Colin contemplated his life up to this point: his paws on David Stanton's chest, David Stanton scratching his chin.

  He was used to being called cute: pretty, brainless, a useful accessory; not special, he thought again, or special only in the way of a trophy or ornament. He was used to parties and late nights and being desired. He was generally not unattractive in human form, long legs and pretty eyes and soft hair and a mouth that other people seemed to appreciate. He could be good for sex with anyone and everyone and sometimes multiple people at once.

  He was also perfectly aware that more than half the time sorcerers and theoreticians and witches wanted to take him home and borrow his power to make spells more effective, a dip in his pool, a shining handful of amplified enchantment in exchange for making him feel loved and cherished for a night, a few hours, a caress of minutes.

  He'd never been good at being alone. He liked pleasing people. He honestly did. That felt good, like a sort of bashful glowing ember inside.

  He'd always been extremely conscious of the fact that the people didn't generally want him. They wanted the power. The sex, which he happened to be spectacular at and quite liked having, thank you. The reputation: not too many up-and-coming witches could say they'd had a wild night with a real-life, meet-one-or-two-in-a-lifetime shapeshifter.

  He considered this last point. Conceded that, given his predilections, a few more witches and warlocks could say so these days.

  Which was how he'd ended up here. On David's lap. In David's house.

  He was going to get David in trouble. He wouldn't be good for David. He'd never thought of himself as evil or malicious, but he was almost certainly not a good person, not the way David Stanton was. David deserved better.

  Unfortunately, the sky was hammering down rain and thunder and lightning like it'd never have another chance. At the moment, Colin possessed exactly no human clothes, wallet, cell phone, or money, and did possess an enemy in the form of that pesky angry warlock who'd recently discovered an absence of kitten.

  And he felt preemptively guilty about fucking up David's life. David's brightly-warded, carefully-woven, bighearted, generous life. David's life, which was about to get vastly more complicated, because Colin either ran again and left a kind witch wondering forlornly where his new kitten had gone, or revealed himself and opened up an entire soap-opera's worth of sex, captivity, a magical enemy, and temptations of power.

  "How'd you know," David asked softly, hand unerringly finding the exact right spot at the base of his tail, "that I didn't want to be alone tonight, kitty? Nothin' awful, just a long day. I can do a lot, but I can't fix everything for everyone."

  Colin purred more. Rolled over on David's lap. Offered his tummy for petting. He hated that melancholy note in David's voice all of a sudden. He didn't even know David, but he didn't like the idea of David being sad.

  David Stanton gave children art infused with good dreams. David helped find lost pets and made tiny animations that could come alive and race around to bring smiles to careworn faces. David rescued rain-soaked frightened kittens and brought them home and shared his own pastrami. David Stanton should forever be protected and happy and given kitten-fluff to pet, Colin decided on the spot.

  David smiled, and the smile echoed through his voice, in his eyes, as he tested a tummy-rub, received a playful swat—no claws—and laughed and tried again, which Colin permitted this time. "You're teasing me, aren't you? Brat—so, yeah, long day, and then there you were, all wet and sad and trying to stay dry under my car, and I just…if I can take care of you, that's somethin' I can do. Just one thing. Makin' life better for somebody."

  Brat, Colin mused; and pounced lightly on David's hand, kicking: a perfect target, as it rested on his stomach. No claws and no real biting, only nibbling; and then he stretched out upside-down and gazed up sweetly and tucked his paws up invitingly.

  "Ha," David told him. "Not falling for that again. Do I need cat toys? Do I need a litterbox? I don't even know how old you are, do you need—okay, you eat solid food, you ate my sandwich, but that's not cat food. Should I go buy cat food? Should I take you to a vet or something?"

  Colin smacked his hand with one paw and scowled.

  He now had yet another problem, because obviously he didn't want David to take him to a vet, first because any semi-competent vet would've worked with magical familiars and would notice something extraordinary, and second because fuck no.

  David laughed. Thunder split the evening sky, booming along. "I guess that me
ans I'm keeping you?"

  Colin's brain took this phrasing, applied it to his human self, and thought about being kept. The fantasy turned up unbidden: that he could reveal himself, say hello, and end up cared for and, yes, kept safe by David. He might not mind that. He might not mind that at all.

  He did like sex. And he was pretty sure he liked David Stanton.

  But David Stanton wasn't going to like him.

  The second he thought this, exhaustion crashed down over him in a smothering wave of sadness. He didn't know what the fuck he wanted. When he thought about going back to his old lifestyle, he only felt icicle-weary, drawn thin and brittle: over the whole party scene, over being someone's magical toy, completely over being trapped in a bespelled collar for eight months as a result of his own unfortunate taste in men, fruit-flavored vodka, and mildly euphoric enchanted enhancements. He wasn't being judgmental—he'd had fun being wanted, and he had friends who still had fun, probably, assuming he still had friends—but he was personally fucking done.

  And if he was done with that life, what did he do now?

  Was there anything he wanted?

  "I need a name for you, then," David mused. "Oliver? You know, like Oliver and Company? Except you're not orange. Oliver should be orange. Somethin' from The Aristocats? O'Malley, Berlioz, Toulouse?"

  Colin, who wouldn't entirely object to being named after a Disneyfied artist or composer but already had a name, looked up. David Stanton was grinning, small and fond, happy to pet a fluffy kitten tummy, still with that tiny line between eyebrows, maybe a headache from the day.

  Colin Rue wanted David Stanton to feel good.

  He flicked his tail, sat up more, and looked into David's eyes, which up close were a lovely shade of darker mossy bark. He was out of practice at doing this willingly, but he'd been a power-source for a warlock disgustingly recently; he should be able to extend magic along those channels. He couldn't manipulate those lines of power but he could nudge his own, the way a lake's boundaries changed over time, and he could shield and heal instinctively; he'd shared himself on purpose before. David glowed like a hearthfire, open and beckoning and empathetic, which should make this easy. That hearthfire presently had a dark unhappy throb at the base of his skull, but that was tiny really, not a challenge.

  David blinked. Reached up to rub the back of his head. "Huh."

  Colin curled his tail around his feet. Put his head on one side. Purred. Smugly.

  "I didn't do that," David realized. "I mean, I barely even noticed it hurt. But if I didn't…and no one else is here, not even my brother…you're not, like, someone's familiar, are you? But then I need to give you back; that's someone else's magic."

  That was hardly the desired result. Colin vaulted fluidly off David's lap. Darted under the coffee-table. Peeked out from behind one solid square wooden leg just to make sure his witch was okay.

  "But that's weird." David rubbed his head again, making his hair stand up. Short and dark and neat, like his beard: masculine and mature while simultaneously youthful and energetic. "If you belonged to someone, they totally weren't taking care of you, you were out in the rain and hungry. You're not tagged or collared or anything, you act like you know exactly what I'm saying, and that magic…"

  Colin grimaced. Right. Damn.

  "…that didn't feel like anything I know." David got down on the floor. Peered at him from eye level, lying unselfconsciously prone over wood and rug, but didn't try to get him out. "Nobody's power signature that I recognize, and it felt more like innate magic, natural magic, but that's not exactly an everyday thing, is it. Or I'm just really fucking tired and I'm confusing myself and I should go to bed. I mean, come on, what're the odds of someone like that turning up under my car, seriously."

  Better than you think, Colin retorted silently. You feel like the world's best safe-haven sanctuary and you have nice hands.

  "I'm just going to make a phone call real quick," David said slowly, getting up, "and then, um, maybe go shopping? Because this's probably all in my head, it's ridiculous, you're a cat. You can stay under there for a sec if you want, while I check on something? And why am I talking to you like you're going to answer? I don't even know. Okay, hang on."

  He wasn't certain who David might be calling, but it wouldn't matter. Choices: down to pretty much one.

  David said, "Hey, Brian? I know you know more coven gossip than I do, yeah I admitted that, yes I know you're never gonna let me forget saying you know more about anything, but shut up about it for now, listen, have you heard about anyone missing a—" and proceeded to wander around the living room, out to the kitchen, around the sofa: David Stanton paced when talking, Colin observed. In motion. Like the rain: constantly pouring, chattering, drenching the world in cool silken patter. Like a forest: rustling happy wet green leaves.

  David meandered back to the kitchen again. Colin gathered kitten-legs, and bolted. Soundless. Down the hall to the open door which led to—guessing, but he was right—David's bedroom.

  David's bedroom displayed a mess, in the way created by someone raised with good habits but single thirty-ish male artist tendencies. Navy-plaid sheets dangled from a half-made bed; some socks and a pair of jeans hadn't made their way fully into the hamper; a stack of books had overflowed from the nightstand to the floor; but on the whole, not bad. Colin noticed the spines on the books. Science fiction, space exploration, a history of Renaissance painter-magicians. Something tugged at his heart, unfamiliar and tender.

  He stopped in the middle of the room, and breathed deeply, and stretched, also deeply. He shut both eyes and reached for that little internal switch, the sense of himself, and felt magic reshape his bones.

  Trading shapes felt like the combination of a full-body sneeze and the exhilaration of an intense brief workout and the release right after a good orgasm: he'd never been able to properly describe it. A ripple and a switch and a snap into another shape that felt right, and a quick shudder of pleasure as sensations ebbed and spilled over and rushed in. He moaned in ecstasy, but only quietly. He was in a hurry. He was decidedly naked.

  David stood an inch or two taller and a bit broader in stature but not too much so. Colin grabbed a soft-looking long-sleeved blue shirt—sensation mattered; he got disconcertingly sensitive everywhere for about an hour after shapeshifting either direction—and managed to discover clean boxer-briefs in the top drawer, but apparently David either owned no clean pants or stored them somewhere else, and he'd not planned to rummage through all of David's clothes, and he was running out of time.

  Fuck it. He could seduce David if he needed to. Then he could stay here, at least for tonight, safe behind those intricately built artistic wards.

  He threw on the shirt, nearly tripped himself pulling on boxer-briefs—heather-grey and simple, bought by someone who liked comfort and a lack of bulky fabric but wasn't dressing to show off, and Colin briefly missed his one-time collection of decadent scarlet and sapphire and ivory scraps—and rumpled up his hair and checked himself in the tall freestanding mirror.

  Long bare legs, bare feet, shirt with marginally too-long sleeves over underwear, big eyes, slightly cold. Harmless. Not any kind of threat. Hopefully appealing to David's kindness. Maybe appealing to David's interest, assuming David had an interest in men. From some half-remembered coven gossip he thought this might be the case, though at the time he hadn't paid much attention to comments about a completely unremarkable local neighborhood witch. And even if not, well, Colin had once upon a time been known to coax a few supposedly uninterested warlocks and witches across that line, too.

  He ran out of the bedroom and down the hall right as David bent back up from quizzically peering under the coffee table, and turned that way.

  Lightning flashed dramatically outside.

  Colin struck a theatrically nonchalant pose, leaning against the wall, framed by David's hallway, playing up coltish legs and sweetness. "Hi," he offered in introduction. "For the record, not Oliver. Berlioz might work. I like mus
icians. But it's Colin, actually, so, yes, hi."

  "Um," David said into the speaker, "Brian, I'm going to have to call you back," and dropped his phone, thankfully on the couch and not the floorboards.

  "I'm sorry I ate all your pastrami," Colin added helpfully.

  "What the fuck," David said.

  "And I borrowed your clothes. I don't have any. And I'm a little cold."

  David stared at him. Made an absentminded curving gesture. The room got warmer.

  "Thank you."

  "No problem. Wait. That was you. Fixing my headache."

  "Yes. I thought—you were so kind and I—" He fumbled, slipped over words, found himself at a loss. He should be better than this, he was good at being precocious and charming, or he ought to be. Somehow he couldn't be anything other than honest. "I wanted to help."

  "You're a… you actually are a… you're not just a…"

  "Not an enchanted familiar, or a witch who fucked up a temporary borrowing spell and got stuck? No and no."

  "Wait." David had carried on staring at him. "I know you."

  "No, you don't." As much as Colin wanted that, and simultaneously didn't want that; twin arrows of mortification and excitement thumped goldenly into his heart. "You wouldn't." He hadn't ever slept with David Stanton, had he? No. No, he'd remember. He was ninety-nine percent confident about this.

  "I totally fuckin' do. I mean, we never formally met. But you were at the last, no, not the last coven gathering, the one before that. You're Colin Rue." David was blushing furiously. "You, um. You were a little bit, okay, a lot drunk and kind of, um, preoccupied with the warlock twins and their hands. I knew you were one of the only natural therianthropes around, of course, and I'd heard a lot of, um, let's say stories."